


A Lesson In Love

by orphan_account



Series: The Dreams 'Verse [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Comeplay, M/M, Masturbation, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Tentabulges, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-29 19:42:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1009291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This has gone beyond a lesson you’re trying to teach him, beyond the excuses you were making just to get him to listen to your "wisdom." You want Karkat, unadulterated. Your body wants him naked, bare and unsheathed and with you always, you want your words from his mouth and your imprints in his skin and you want to spill all over his chest—<br/>You, Kankri Vantas, want, and you’re a sinner for it."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lesson In Love

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, remember me? lol
> 
> It's been like what, eight or nine months since I updated the Dreams' Verse, but I'm here, I'm queer, and I'm ready to full-on Vantascest once more.
> 
> A couple things: One, I started writing this in about December or January, so it's not current with the most recent updates at all. As far as we knew back then, it wasn't yet Year Three, Dave and Terezi were still possibly a thing, Gamzee and Karkat were definitely still a thing, and we weren't sure whether or not Karkat cared that Gamzee and Terezi were kismesises (so in my version of this story, he still cares quite a bit.)  
> Two, there are a couple headcanons that I've incorporated into this after reading others' fics, such as the headcanon I have that moirails are meant to fill a pail together when they begin their relationship (as seen in urbanAnchorite's Case Studies on Moiraillegience). When there are weird little things like that that I've borrowed from other authors I'll be crediting them as such along the way~  
> Three, there'll be in-fic POV changes between Kanrki and Karkat in here.
> 
> And that should be it for now. I suck and it took me a long time for me to like this story enough to start posting it, but hopefully enough of you are still down to watch as I write a bunch of words of Kankri/Karkat porn for this valiant ship, lol
> 
> EDIT: As of 1/22/14, I'm shortening this fic by a ton and it's gonna be more like a two- or three-shot as opposed to a really long multi-chapter, because I'm super slow at doing those.

_And when I'm alone, you are near to me._  
 _You have made a home in my memory._  
 _There you will abide for forever,_  
 _And I’ll keep you warm in the night._  
—Janelle Monae, "BaBopByeYa"

 

**Kankri**

****(♋)** **

“ _Kankri._ ”

He’s your innocent, never been touched before like this and yours to mold with your hands.

_“Fuck, Kankri—”_

He’s all pliant skin and sturdy, slender bones, shuddering under your fingertips and staring up at you with big, black eyes like you’re holding onto his heart.

“ _Harder, don’t stop—”_

You thought he’d never let you do teach him this way, so openly. His shirt's long gone and your fingers are thrusting half-in-and-out of his nook and you’re a hundred and ten pounds of writhing troll-in-heat straddling his thighs, grasping his neck with your lips, biting, sucking, rutting against him, he’s shaking despite himself and singing your name like a prayer and you don’t think you’ve ever heard a sound so lovely in your life.

His pants are unzipped, shoved down his thighs and your hands are all wet and tangled up in his lewd anatomy.  You flick your fingers harder and faster, feel his nook spasm around your knuckles and feel his bulge, shallowly, rhythmically, thwack its way around your forearm; he’s sprawled out before you, yours to keep and so gone right now that you still can’t believe that it’s you who can take him here.

_“Fuck, give it to me, please Kankri, harder, fuck, please don’t stop—”_

“Karkat—”

You suddenly feel a sharp, almost-painful squeeze around your bulge, and before you even realize what you’re doing to yourself, your vision blacks out and you’re hyperaware that your hips are thrusting jerkily and that you’re coming, tense and messy, over the top of your tightened fist.

You’re all alone.

You gasp out. Your eyes open swiftly. You’re in the dream-projection of your respiteblock, and you look down to find that your spoor slime is so filled to the brim with red, there’s almost no lime left to the tint of the liquid. Shit. Your hands have done it once again, betrayed you in a haze-like daydream of him, and almost as if they’re only half-awake and detached from you, they’re still teasing and fumbling with your too-sensitive bulge, trying to coax it back to rest. It’s making your throat let out these chirpy little moans, there’s a slow burn flickering in your chest and you can _feel,_ everywhere, too much.

“Enjoying yourself there, Kanny?”

Porrim stands in your doorway, one arm holding a basket and the other propped against the wooden frame, her big white eyes, amused at best, falling on you in your post-orgasmic state like fucking judgement day.

“Porrim!”

You jump inside your skin. You scramble and slushy glops of fluid-slime pour and splash over the edge of the recuperacoon and onto the floor.

“What are you _doing_ in here!?” You hurry to cover your thin, soiled, unwashed body from her with your arms, curling in on yourself. “Don’t look at me, get _out_!”

“Don’t yell."

Porrim ignores your discomfort as she enters the room like all’s normal, her hips swinging fluidly with ease. She begins to pick up some of your sweaters from various places on the floor like they’re her own (and well, technically they are), and your flush incinerates you from the inside out.

 _“_ I have _told you_ —” you shout, shakier and shriller, “ _repeatedly,_ to ask for my _explicit_ permission before you enter my quarters!” She growls and tenses up like your voice is the sound of claws retching down a steel plate. “I mean it, _get out,_ you’re triggering my anxiety!”

“I’m giving you back your laundry!”

As she moves close to your recuperacoon to put her basket on one of your shelves, you cover your intimate bits even more with your hands. Porrim’s never had any qualms about nudity—wouldn’t you know, judging by the way she’s always half-dressed anyway—and she’s seen you naked before when you were both young, she always tells you as much, but there’s just something _different_ about it now that you’re adults.

Sure, you know that you touch yourself, and you’ve studied the science and the theory of masturbation enough to know that it’s healthier than it is wrong. But as far as everyone outside of you knows, including _her_ , you’re celibate to the point that you don’t actually _need_ anyone.

They can’t know you need anyone.

It terrifies you that your body keeps trying to betray its solidarity to your thinkpan.

Heat still sears across your chest. Porrim gracefully begins to fold one of your red sweaters like you’re not even there, as if you’re not stained with your own humiliation right in front of her. She takes her time tucking in the arms so that the garment lies flat in a perfectly-cornered square, and annoyed, you turn away from her and look down at yourself, and your unseemly body.

Ever since you showed him how to touch himself for the first time, your body's been doing this to you; whenever your mind gives you stark, lewd daydreams of him to feed off of, your body reacts before you will it to, jacking itself off to his image and rushing your pleasure before you can control it.

You sigh. As good as it’s felt the last two times you’ve thought of him like this, it gives you a sinking feeling in your gut. You’re guilty for the lack of control you imagine yourself having with him. This wasn’t supposed to be about you touching him, ever, it was supposed to be about self-control.

And for the gods’ sake, all you did was _kiss_ Karkat, innocently,the last time you saw him. And even that seems so long ago now. You’re pressed as to how he keeps floating into your dreams in this way, sexually, even though you’re apart.

“Come on out,” Porrim says, cutting into your thoughts, “I’m sure you feel as miserable as you look in there.”

She’s right. Looking down at the glue-like stew in which you sit is starting to trigger a little bit of nausea; usually you’ve scrubbed yourself clean of your mess in the ablution trap by now, but _she_ presents a problem.

She caught you. Your humiliation still burns. You know what she must think of you now, but she’s not _doing anything_ to show it, and that bothers you.

You just want her to leave.

You rise, hands still covering your crotch.

“ _Don’t_ turn around,” you warn her.

“Then hurry up and get dressed,” she complains.

You’re careful not to slip on the wet bits of the slick, white floor as you rush to a back corner of your room. You quickly produce a towel from your sylladex, then pull a pair of soft, black pants up past your ribcage, and realize with impatience that Porrim’s picked up the sweater you were wearing earlier and thrown it in her basket. There are no shirts to put on in your vicinity and you just need to be _covered._

 “Are you _quite finished_?” you ask her, rapping your foot against the ground.

She glares at you over her near-glowing shoulder, then returns to her folding.

“You don’t have to fold them _just_ like that you know,” you continue. “It’s taking too long.”

“You asked meto fold them _‘just_ like this, you know,’ when you gave me your laundry last time.” She sounds just like you when she mocks you. She knows you too well, and it _bothers_ you.

“Well will you just hand me one already?” you snap. “I’m _highly_ uncomfortable with being this exposed—”

“You know this never would’ve happened if you would just do your own laundry,” she groans.

“This never would’ve happened if you would’ve just _knocked!"_

A sweater comes hurling at you from her vicinity; it hits you in the face. You wrap yourself in it in a hurry, pulling the turtleneck up over your nose to cover your sullied cheeks. You inhale. The fabric smells like bleach and warmth and a little bit of bitterness and spice, like Porrim’s own clothes, like Beforus, like home; you burrow your nose further into the sweater.

You stay backed into the corner and stare at Porrim’s back as she works; the stripes of tattooed ink curl and stretch with her muscle movements. After a moment or two, she realizes you’ve gone quiet and perhaps she can feel your eyes on her. She turns around to look at you again. Her eyes soften.

“Go wash off,” she tells you. “Putting clothes on doesn’t make you clean.”

You unfold the neck of the sweater just a touch to speak. “I will once you’re out. And, once you _promise_ not to breath a _word_ of this to—“

She cuts you off with a terse laugh. “What makes you think I’d tell anyone about _this_?”

“Please, you’re _you,_ ” you deadpan her. “If you don’t tell it willingly, someone will coax it out of your mouth, perhaps while also offering you a complementary filial pail fill.”

She rolls her eyes.

“So I caught you showing yourself a good time for a couple seconds,” she groans. “And? We all do it.” She looks at your bookshelf. “You have eight volumes written on it right here.”

“As usual, you don’t understand, Porrim,” you front. “It’s good and well that my thinkpan is familiar with any and all physical, interquadrant practices, in theory, but _I,_ don’t ‘do it.’ I, _cannot,_ ‘do it.’”

“Hell, we get bored enough around here to do it with each other,” she continues. She glances at you, smiling slightly. “You’re the only one who hasn’t joined in on our mutual masturbation nights yet, by the way.”

“ _Ew,_ ” you tell her.

Porrim's smile fades a bit, and then she looks into your eyes again.

“We’re nine sweeps now," she tells you.

You raise a brow, wait for her to keep on.

“We’re _old,_ Kanny, and we’re gonna be here, dead, for a long time." She pauses. "Probably forever.”

“What is your point?” you rush her.

“My point is, look at you.”

She’s finished folding your sweaters so she comes closer your corner. You feel both drawn to her familiarity and put off by her proximity; why‘s she always _inserting herself in your business_ like this? Why does she care?

“You’re always alone,” she says. “You’re the only one of us who’s never had a matesprit—“

“I don’t _need_ a matesprit—“

“—and you refuse to stop caging yourself up like this even though _no one cares_ what kind of show you’re putting on now that we’re all dead.”

Her words affront you. You look away. She crosses her arms, tilts her hips, looks at you harder all genuine and concerned and a touch pale, and it makes you _feel._

“When was the last time you even _talked_ to any of us?” she asks you, voice softer.

You turn your nose up. “If you must know, I had a _discussion_ with Cronus just the other day about quadrant vacillation, and the dangers of swift red-black interchanges, and the impacts that unchecked flushed and caliginous advances can have on, trigger warning, Beforan rape culture and its—”

“He wasn’t even listening to you.” Porrim groans again. “That wasn’t _to_ him, that was _at_ him.”

“Well maybe I like talking _at_ people,” you bark. “Maybe it’s the only way I’m actually _heard_.”

“No one wants to hear you when you aren’t willing to hear them--”

“Did I _ask_ for you to come in here and lecture me, Porrim?”

“Oh, _that_ is rich." She laughs. “You, talking to me, about _lectures_.”

“The door is over there,” you spit. Your tone reaches toxic levels. “You’ve done my laundry, Ms. Maryam, now you may see yourself _out_.”

She narrows her eyes at you.

“What’s going on with you? Are you okay?”

You pause. You’re still sticky beneath your clothes, your body’s still slightly shivering from your orgasm, and you, Kankri Vantas, are not very okay.

“I’m fine.” You shut your eyes. Shut her off. “Besides the fact that you triggered me by barging in here, trying _intentionally_ to see me naked. Pervert.”

“Jegus, even when you’re self-conscious you’re still a raging narcissist.”

You point to the door. “Good _bye,_ Porrim!”

“Alright, alright!”

Porrim leaves your room in a flourish of dark hair and bitter perfume. You press your hands firmly against the door after she leaves, as if that will somehow keep it sealed shut longer.

You thought you would be fine, after you saw Karkat last. And you were, for a little while.

Because for a little while, you were only in it for him. When you kissed him the last time you saw him, gentle and sweet, it was only to teach him; to teach him how to find balance and identity in his body and himself, to show him that someone, even if it was just an empty shell of a being like you, would always care.

It wasn’t about you. You hadn’t gotten off, not really, and your emotional, protective feelings for your young dancestor aside, the physical stuff between you was meant purely to be clinical.

Just the vehicle for your lesson.

You thought, after watching him come, all lovely and liberated in your lap, that you’d soon forget what his body looked like naked; you thought you’d never let the realization that you saw another tangible, spiritual being in a sexual way fester in your thinkpan; but now,

Now you, Kankri Vantas, are not fine. This has gone beyond a lesson you’re trying to teach him, beyond the excuses you were making just to get him to listen to your “lectures” and your wisdom. You _want_ Karkat, unadulterated. Your body wants him naked, bare and unsheathed and with you always, you want your words from his mouth and your imprints in his skin and your come spilling all over his chest—

You, Kankri Vantas, want, and you’re a sinner for it.

You haven’t wanted in a long time, not since your wriggler’s daydreams of Laluta, and no less someone younger than you, and no less someone you wanted to keep safe just as much as you wanted to absolutely _ruin._ Karkat flushes so beautifully red when he’s ruined.

But you can’t touch him. You _won’t_ let yourself touch him; only he can touch himself. And besides, he disappeared the last time you saw him. You’re not sure how much time his party has left, how soon it will be before they reach their session; he just disappeared. Maybe he’s already left your reach.

Maybe he no longer needs you, and you are left alone, no longer celibate of the mind, still wanting.

In the ablution trap, you scald yourself, scratch yourself, attempt to burn your body clean.

It’s no use. Your young self, he has absolutely ruined you.

 

**Karkat**

****(♋)** **

You miss being able to sleep in slime. You’d try to alchemize some yourself, though it’d be a stretch, but it’s too bad your moirail would scarf it down by the pieful and hit the refresh button on his furious quest for blood.

Your head aches.

You were just asleep. You’ve just come back from a nightmare in which there was nothing but darkness, dull pain, and droning noise—probably horrorterrors—and you don’t know what time you fell asleep, or what time it even is now.

You never do. You’re in fucking space.

It’s quiet in the room where you lie on your back, alone on Gamzee’s horn pile. You figure the others must be off doing their own thing, as usual, not caring one pulsing shame globe about what you’re doing, as usual. Not that it matters. You’ve been continuing to isolate yourself from more and more from the five of them anyway, even more so ever since Dave kicked your sorry ass in a strife on the rooftop and everyone got see how huge of a fool he’d just made you, Terezi included, (she hasn’t spoken to you since, but she has looked at you once or twice over her should, and you think that’s made your isolation even worse. You miss your dear friend so, and part of you will always still want her.)

Every once in a while you hang out with Gamzee in the air conditioning vent, and sometimes you chat for a moment or two with Kanaya about the vaguely ominous and uncontrollable future, but other than that, you continue to stay alone. You’ve still been grouchy and testy, hardly letting anyone but Gamzee so much as accidentally brush up against you, let alone actually touch you,

And you’re only so irritable because—how pitiful is this?—all you really want, more than anything in this virtual world, is to see your ancestor Kankri again.

Lord English quickly approaches you and your friends. The true heroes, those unlike you, are waiting for you to arrive so that you can all fight this glitch to the death. The smell of your friends’ blood never quite leaves the air about you, and your end in this game feels inevitable at this point too. It all just makes you wish that you could sleep ‘til it’s over, or just sleep forever; you were doomed to die young at home anyway. You wish that you could stay wrapped up in a dream, in Kankri, in his safety, in an ignorant bubble of warmth and denial and orgasm, forever.

He’d made you feel so _good_ and you can’t stop thinking about it. Pitiful, pathetic.

It’s been unfairly long since your last trip to his dream bubble. Maybe twenty or thirty human “nights,” by your count? Who cares even, “human” nights are stupid. It’s been long enough that all of your scars from your fight with Dave, the ones that Kankri gently mended for you, have either faded or healed completely. It seemed silly to become attached to something like your own injuries, but they were the last tangible evidence that you had of Kankri touching you, and kissing, in reality.

Sometimes you still touch the few remaining scars with your fingertips. You run your pads over them the way that he had before you’d woken up abruptly and left him, right as you were about to settle into a lingering kiss that _both_ of you wanted this time. It was unfair; you’d still been able to faintly _taste him_ on your lips upon your return.

You’d been horny just thinking about it, and had tried touching yourself to his image by yourself, but you felt so stupid and frustrated that it couldn’t be real, and that you were not him, and that his voice was more soothing and coaxing and willing than your own, that you couldn’t get yourself more than halfway to climax.

“Fuck.”

You’d slipped your sore hand of your pants, your legs trembling in your half-assed arousal, your bulge cramping and the red flushing slightly bruised-blue. You sighed, and shut your eyes, talking as though he could hear you, wherever he was out there in the universe:

“Fuck you, I can’t do this without you.”

You don’t want to think about that now.

You emerge from the horn pile room and wander into the halls, picking up a thinly-threaded human-blanket that you think belongs to Rose and wrapping it around your shoulders.

You hear voices coming from one of the back rooms. Reluctantly you head towards it, going to check on in its inhabitants like the leader you used to be would, though you’re not intending on joining them.

You peek inside the dark room and they’re all sitting on the couch, watching a romance movie on the projector Dave alchemized. Kanaya and Rose are sitting on the farthest side with their legs intertwined, whispering to each other and giggling and even from here, you can see that they both have smears of black lipstick on their cheeks and neck.

Dave sits with his red-sleeved arm around Terezi, and is the first one who glances over at your figure lurking in the doorway. He gives you one of those cool guy head nods and a weird smile, as if nothing has even fucking happened between the two of you lately, as if he didn’t grate your ass into the concrete and give you beating during strife while everyone watched not that long ago.

The arm around Terezi tightens after he looks away from you.

Terezi faces forward towards the movie, lights from the screen dancing on the surface of her shiny crimson glasses. She shoves popcorn from a bowl into her mouth, claw after claw, gracelessly sucks the extra butter and salt from her fingers with her long, black tongue and attempting to stick a few spare kernels in Dave’s mouth every once in a while,

And Gamzee, with eyes glazed over, is sitting in a hunched position next to Terezi with that freaky little Cal thing draped around his shoulders. You’re pretty sure he’s not even remotely processing this movie right now, he’s just sitting there to sit there like a flimsy juggalo voodoo doll, and it hurts you a little bit to see it. The shadows and the flashing lights from the screen flicker across the jagged scars on his nose and make him look extraordinarily fucking creepy, as if he needed any _extra_ help in that department.

You stand, awkward and uncomfortable in the door, watching them not watching you; you're jealous.

At least they all fit in _somewhere_ in this unfortunate, tight-knit little group of lost soldiers _;_ all of them fit but you.

You feel like the only true alien in the room sometimes, like everyone else is comfortable with each other in ways you’re not anymore, or never was, or like everyone is suddenly in on something that you’re not. It's like at some point you went into a deep sleep, and woke up to find _something_ changed, but no one will stop and tell you what it is, or what you missed, or even if you even still matter.

And you’ve been sleeping a lot lately, which hasn’t really helped.

“Well look who all it motherfuckin’ is.”

Gamzee (and Lil’ Cal) look at you now, and Kanaya acknowledges you with a pleasant, black smile.

“Hello,” she says, “we’re watching ‘In Which A Jadeblooded Troll Female Protagonist Becomes The Object Of A Greenblooded Troll Male’s Flushed Desires, Though She Is His Blueblooded Best Friend’s Matesprit; Nevertheless The Female  And Male Gradually Form A Relationship In Secret And Fall Deep Into The Flushed Throes; The Audience Is Meant To Discern That The Female Is Not Content With Her Current Matesprit For Reasons Relating To Quadrant Misappropriation; After Which Approximately Seven Scenes Of Heavy Kissing Are Shown, All Leading Up To The Highly Climactic First Pailing; The Best Friend Discovers The Female Protagonist’s Flushed Infidelity And Threatens To Cull The Male Protagonist, Thus Revealing A Previously Unseen Antagonistic Aspect Of His Character; A High Speed Chase Ensues Between The Male And The Best Friend, In Which The Best Friend Is Eventually Thwarted And Fatally Injured, And The Female and Male Protagonists Are Able To Resume Their Matespritship In The Open In The End.” She says it all fluidly and Rose, who is drunk, looks at her like she’d like to take her over a table; you cringe. “I hope you don’t mind that I stole, I mean borrowed it from your collection,” Kanaya adds, wrapping her arm around Rose tighter.

“It’s fine, just put it back when you’re done."

Dave yawns, his arms curling even closer around Terezi.

Gamzee looks at you searchingly. “Where’ve you up and been all this time?” he asks.

“Doesn’t matter.” You sigh, curling the blanket even tighter around your compact body. “Scoot over, will you? You’re the thinnest excuse for a still-living entity that I’ve ever seen, like I seriously don’t know how you still have skin over your bones at this point, so I know that if you’d stop taking up the seat space of a troll eight fucktons your size and close your never-ending slug legs, maybe I could actually fit next to you on this goddamn shitty couch?”

Gamzee looks vaguely like he doesn’t recognize you for a moment, and then it connects. “Happy to motherfuckin’ oblige of that for you.”

Gamzee shifts towards Terezi accordingly, nudging her over and everyone but Dave does a little shift accordingly to make room. Once you sink into the cushion, Gamzee instinctively wraps his gangly arm around the back of the couch. You lean your head back and rest it on his wiry bicep by habit. His claws are half-scratching your shoulder.

He turns to you about a minute later, asks something to the extent of, “What’d you up and fuckin’ do to your face there, little brother?”, to which you scowl a little and turn away, and huff “nothing.” It’s about time he noticed that Dave did more damage during your strife with him than was necessary. You don’t want everyone to be reminded once more of your formal ass-kicking though, so you shun Gamzee’s question now and suppose you’ll let him touch what's left of your scarring later on, during your next feelings jam. You nestle yourself a little deeper into his embrace.

You begin to watch the movie. It’s not long before you start to get invested in the film’s hot and heavy events; these characters and this plot in particular have always done something to make your hopeless romantic’s bloodpusher stir.

The scenes are all so intense and passionate. You pay close attention to the minute, romantic details that you’d missed before, every pitiful wandering eye, every deep, meaningful kiss, every sexual, playful smile, every open display of affection. It makes nooses tie tight around the necks of the butterflies in your stomach to watch the female protagonist play with the male like he’s her instrument, to hear their breaths bate and see their hands grope and notice their bulges working hard against their thinly-sewn pants. You typically prefer to watch your flush-crush movies alone and in silence because of these arousing details (and because of how _humiliatingly_ aroused you become while viewing them), but of course, the others keep babbling and laughing and ruining everything for you as it goes on. Watching it with them—with the ones who all have quadrants filled but you—just makes you feel even more alone.

You used to study all of these romance movies so much and so closely to try to model your behavior with Terezi after them. Things are so different now with her now, aren’t they?

You hope that no one else notices how romantic your body is finding this. A glance to your right finds Terezi’s thigh resting slightly on top of Gamzee’s. Dave hasn’t even looked down to notice. Here and there you watch as she “clumsily” misses her own leg when she intends to wipe the butter-grease off on her jeans, instead swiping her hand across his thigh and stabbing her claws into his leg before pulling away: foreplay. When Gamzee tenses a little against you each time, you frantically look up at him to stabilize his reaction, but besides regarding her with a glaring twitch of his eyes, and a slight shift of his hips against hers, he hardly reacts at all.

Sitting near them’s making you wax gray; sometimes you wonder if they’re safe, if he’s really as in control of himself as he seems, if he’s stable enough to choke her while he fucks her without also snapping her neck—but you care about her too, and just want her happy, and that’s why you know that getting between them would only push her further away from you, she’s strong and doesn’t need your pity to save her. It's not like you, as her auspitice, even wanna know what she looks like when he makes her come—you try to wash your hands of these thoughts.

When it gets to the first pailing between the matesprits in the movie, you almost can’t watch, on account of the nudity and their intimate noises and the rose-colored cinematography, it's all making you feel too heavy-limbed and needy. The first pailing in every Alternian romance film, and especially this one, is a special event, the climax of the movie, the most naked scene to film; the first discovering of someone’s body, seeing all of them for what they are, knowing what truly makes them open up and let go and come—this movie in particular has the dreamiest first pailing scene you’ve personally ever seen; it's like Kanaya  _knew_ this movie would get to you.

Your thinkpan retrieves something for a moment you don’t like to think about: you were supposed to have a first pailing, though a different one than this. You and Gamzee were supposed to fill a pail just once, as is customary for the Alternian commencement of any great (adult) moirailegiance; But your relationship happened under such, well, extreme and extenuating circumstances, that you never got around to it. You’ve never even seen him remotely naked, nor he you.

The thought only slips into your mind here and there. Other than that you try to burn all traces of it. You could approach him about it now, you think, it’s not like he’d reject you, but more than that, you’re far too scared to touch him in any way that isn't conciliatory.

He’s been out of it lately, and by lately, you mean as long as he’s been your moirail. With you anyway, he’s all slow movements and even slower words; he drapes himself around you, and doesn't have much to say, and it’s not like he used to be when he was high; he doesn’t smile anymore like he used to. It’s more like his brain’s been incapacitated so severely by the snap, that he can't be willed to make decisions on his own, or even, like—think. With you it seems, he’s only half-living. You suppose that’s how it has to be, how you have to make sure he stays, in order to keep him sane.

It doesn’t mean that some of your curiosity about him still doesn’t linger, however.

What’s he _really_ like? you sometimes wonder. He’s not himself when he’s high, and you can feel he’s not himself when he's sober and you’re with him, so is being in heat what makes him come to life again? Do you even want to know? You’re all hormones, sitting there next to him on the couch. Gamzee keeps drawing your focus away from your thoughts, stroking your arm back and forth with his claws to keep you warm, and even though it’s meant to be a touching gesture, you can’t help but shiver at the weight of his hands. You know he’s just your palemate, but he’s the only warm body that gets close to you when you’re awake—

And ever since Kankri made you actually come for the first time in your life, you’ve been horny as _fuck_. With the way your dancestor coaxed you into masturbating in his lap like that, all splayed and open for him to see, how could you _not_ be?  It’s hard not to think of the way that he touched you, the way you shook and cursed and climaxed and sank into the warmth of his arms. You always mange to think about it in the worst places, too, always turning ruddy pink and feeling heat in your chest and a rush of blood to your nook when you’re around the others—

Such is the case right now—

And it doesn’t help that physical proximity with practically anyone has the potential to make you want. You’ve become so pathetic that you have to pointedly try to _not_ stare at every pair of legs that ever walks by you, Rose’s, Dave’s, Terezi’s, even Kanaya’s, fuck, no one is off limits to your impatient bone bulge when you’re seven sweeps and the only action you’ve gotten is with someone who you’re separated from by reality itself—

Your bulge twitches once in its sheath—

When you got into a fight with Dave even, when he pinned you down and kicked you in the gut and drew slits of red blood across your arms and face, parts of you swore that you were seeing black. You don't even like him, but what was to be expected? He was all over you, rutting against you and ringing you out by the neck of your sweater, engaging in so much shit talk with you that your bulge mistook it for foreplay—your body gets so desperate sometimes that you’d even take being wrestle-fucked by that asshole, not like he even remotely gets what kismesitude is (he keeps on calling it “kismespades,” the numbnut)—

The point is, you just want _something._ You want to be taken, you want to be lost and found in someone, you want to _need,_ and you know that you don’t want it with someone who doesn’t even like you, with someone that who’s not flushed for you back, but it’s hard, and you’re lonely, and really, you’d settle for anyone who didn’t think you were completely worthless.

Because what if this is it? What if, after the game, the dead don't come back to life and you're among them? What if when Alternia returns as it should be, you're still a freak, and still meant to be asexual to avoid being culled?

If these are your last moments, you just want to be loved in them by  _someone._  

You want to be released, be unwound, by someone who also loves you; you want that stupid, fleeting, matesprit-romance to just be yours while you still last. Is that pathetic? Shouldn't you want to fight? You can't even care.

You want to feel the way that Kankri made you feel for that small moment, when he said,

_“You went sweeps hiding yourself away from the world out of fear, but you look lovely like this, Karkat. With this color all over you.”_

Your bulge, engorged, oversensitive, starts to slip from its sheath and push up against the inside of your pants, making you half-gasp and tense up in Gamzee’s arms.

“I’m gonna—“

You're blurting words out without wlling them. Gamzee frowns a touch, looks down at you curiously, and even Kanaya is looking over at you from the corner of her eye at the sound of your voice.

“Go. Knock out,” you finish. You stand up from Gamzee’s side, quickly. “Fucking tired.”

Gamzee mutters something at you as you leave, but you’re too in a hurry to catch it. With the blanket for protection, you leave, and stumble into the part of the hall where your book pile waits for you.

You curl yourself on top of it, knees to your chest, and can’t help but try again to touch yourself. You try to curl your fingers like he did, try to go as fast as he did, slip your too-rough fingers up your shirt to try and coax your muscles to relax.

It doesn’t work.

You give up. You stare at the ceiling of the meteor, your pants half unzipped. He’s ruined you, Kankri has—made your dreams that much better than reality, to the point that you’re neither here nor there, to the point that the darkness of sleep is better than life.

You sigh.

“The next time I see you I swear to god,” you mutter to him, wherever he is, but you can’t even finish that thought.

When you close your eyes to sleep, it is dark. You expect the darkness to remain this time, expect to feel yourself slip into the unconsciousness of a nightmare, but this time, you don’t.

This time, once you slip into the dark, you come out on the side of the light: a dream bubble.

You stand in front of golden, Prospitian stairs, and realize where you are again, and you almost want to run off to find him, but before you can start, you hear his voice, warm and familiar and breaking in its relief, coming from behind you.

“Karkat," Kankri says, and you can hear his smile.

“ _Finally_.”


End file.
